Laissez les bonnes crevettes rouler!

Achtung! This will be the first in a series of dual-author posts. Alex will write the first section of this post and Alana the second. You'll know who is talking by the font.

Yesterday, between teaching, grading, and seeing a lecture on the Tea Party at school, I decided that nothing in the world sounded better for dinner than a po' boy. For the sake of clarity, a po' boy is a sandwich that is to New Orleans what pizza is to Chicago and New York, what cheese is to Wisconsin, wine to California, Jazz music to New Orleans, etc etc. Analogy time! A po'boy : New Orleans :: Jazz : New Orleans. In constructing my analogy this way, I'm setting "a po'boy" on par with "jazz" in such a way to imply that they both hold relationships to New Orleans that are similar. What I'm trying to say (albeit in a pedantic, long-winded, and somewhat logically flawed way) is that a po' boy is the culinary incarnation of New Orleans-style jazz. You'll see what I mean.

While visiting NOLA, I've become a veteran po' boy eater. Since they're most often made with seafood, this is good for me, but it also means that if you want reviews of chicken or beef po' boys, you'll have to do some independent research. Anyway, I've eaten them in rather nice restaurants, at hole-in-the-wall restaurants, plain, with hot sauce, with remoulade, and with different types of bread and vegetation, which has led me to what I consider the best po' boy recipe ever created. (Note: I'm not cajun or creole, I don't practice voodoo, and I barely speak any French, much to my girlfriends dismay, but I do cook and part of my soul still resides in New Orleans)

After learning all about the Tea Party (bunch of populist crazies, them), Alana and I went off to Whole Foods to pick up some shrimp, bread, a tomato, and some other miscellany. We found fresh de-veined, de-shelled shrimp on sale for $9.99/lb (down from 12.99) so we got 2 lbs figuring we'd use one and freeze the other. We found a wheat French baguette, the tomato and the rest and headed home to whip up a batch of wonderful. Ordinarily in NOLA, a po' boy calls for a mountain of popcorn shrimp, but these 36-42s were too good to pass up -- and they were fresh!

This is where the narrative splits. I dealt with cleaning and frying the shrimp, cutting the bread and tomato, and some of the finished sandwich construction and Alana made the sauce, mixed the spices, breaded the shrimp, and did some construction of her own.


As simple as a po' boy may seem, its success or failure hinges upon the quality of all its parts.  I never had a po' boy until we were in New Orleans, and while we tried quite a few, I was never really all that impressed.  Sure, the seafood flavors were always present- you can't really beat Louisiana crawfish.  Sometimes there were fried green tomatoes accompanying the star player, sometimes there was a remoulade.  However, there was always something missing.  Had we ventured out into la vrai bayou, we may have had some toe-curling sauce and some slap-yo-mama fried shrimp.  However, as with most touristy towns, we got touristy food while we stuck to Bourbon Street.


That isn't to say that the po' boy didn't stick with me.  Since our trip I've had a few cravings for po' boys, but since I thought that it would be too labor intensive to make them, I decided I would wait until we found a passable cajun restaurant.  When Alex and I left the lecture and he mentioned wanting a po' boy, I was more than willing to procure the necessary items and laissez les bons temps, or as we're saying, les bonnes crevettes rouler.


We used a remoulade and spice recipe from a blog I follow: Closet Cooking.  You can find the specific link here, but I highly suggest that you peruse Kevin's amazing (and extensive) collection of culinary delights.
Closet Cooking's Remoulade Sauce


For ease, I've gone ahead and listed the ingredients here as well:

Remoulade sauce- makes about 1/2 cup

1/4 cup mayonnaise (we used Vegenaise)
1 tablespoon horseradish mustard
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 small clove garlic
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon capers
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika
hot sauce to taste

-Blend together until smooth

Cajun spice mix:

2 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon dried leaf oregano
1 teaspoon dried leaf thyme

I put about a quarter of the mix into the remoulade sauce, as well as a third in the flour we'd be using to coat the shrimp.

Alex and I were a bit perplexed about the breading process.  We both like fried food, and I grew up in Kentucky, the capital of fried chicken.  I'd always heard you used egg and flour, or milk and flour.  Alex had heard the same, but we wanted a crunchier crunch, so we decided to dredge the shrimp in breadcrumbs as well.  What a sticky mess!  After my first four shrimp I had a serious coating of flour and breadcrumbs on my fingers.  Yet in my opinion, the messier the recipe, the better the food will be.

Shrimp Frying:

After detailing (de-tailing, hehe) and washing the little buggers, I got the oil ready. I used just enough that the shrimp would float and stuck a candy-thermometer on the pan to make sure I wasn't going down the road of too-hot oil. After they were breaded, I fried them like a damn pro. GB and D. Golden-brown and delicious! I kept my oil at about 350F and fried 4 at a time so the temp wouldn't dive too much upon shrimp entering the pool.

Bread:

I cut the loaf into thirds, and then sliced one side open. In order to better fit all the stuff, I scraped out a bit of the bread making a trench. Sauce went on one side, vegetables on the other, and shrimp in the middle with the remaining sauce on the shrimp themselves.

How a po' boy is like jazz:

The complexity of the remoulade sauce stood on top of the solid shrimp/bread foundation and belted out a mind-blowing improv number that the sauce alone could never have done! Make this and you'll understand what I mean. As for cooking music, I recommend Panorama Jazz Band. You can find their stuff on iTunes. Now. Do it.


Taking a bite of this po' boy brought back all the good memories of New Orleans- relaxing under a tree in Jackson Square Park, traipsing along Frenchmen Street in search of good jazz, meandering through the drunken denizens of Bourbon Street.  The best memory of NOLA was experiencing the sights and sounds with Alex, and it was such a treat to prepare, assemble and enjoy these sandwiches. This is sure to become a stand-by recipe in our kitchen for years to come, even if we do wander out into the environs of New Orleans one of these days.  I guarantee!